


For All The Shame We Carry

by elvntari



Series: Canonverse Tolkien [9]
Category: TOLKIEN J. R. R. - Works & Related Fandoms, The Silmarillion and other histories of Middle-Earth - J. R. R. Tolkien
Genre: (not domestic violence just chatting about the kinslayings), Implied Sexual Content, Implied/Referenced Hate Sex, Implied/Referenced Unhealthy But Consensual Kink, Implied/Referenced Violence, Kinslaying, M/M, POV Third Person, Relationship Problems, Second Chances, Unhealthy Relationships, marriage problems
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-08
Updated: 2019-08-08
Packaged: 2020-08-16 02:31:07
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,326
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20165926
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/elvntari/pseuds/elvntari
Summary: After a fight, Maglor comes back home with hypothermia and Daeron is forced to reevaluate the state of their relationship post-first age.





	For All The Shame We Carry

**Author's Note:**

> The file for this was originally titled 'Maglor Shaming' and I think that still holds. There's a line in there about choking which is 100% meant to allude to (consensual) kinky hate sex rather than domestic abuse, but I thought I'd warn you just in case! This is about the status of a very unhealthy relationship, but both of the characters are self-aware about it and want to change.
> 
> I hit big writer's block while getting this done, but hopefully it's enjoyable nonetheless! Thanks to the discord server for helping me out! Oh, right: I have a server specifically for fic writers who are into Tolkien where you can get support and advice (as well as friendship) so feel free to come join the party here: https://discord.gg/mXxGkBg

A paradox is a statement or proposition that appears on its surface self-contradictory. Daeron’s life was made of them. He was the man who loved and hated the same person; who put someone in danger to keep them safe, who could be completely blindsided and absolutely unsurprised by a turn of events. His thoughts, emotions, feelings—his  _ everything  _ had never been easy. After all, he spent his entire life fumbling for the perfect way to express the abstractions that lived and loved and built nests and reproduced and grew within him. And so, his world was made of paradox after paradox.

Maglor had run off into the rain a thousand times before, each and every one of them after one of their loose approximations of a fight—a few harsher-than-normal words, the occasional mention of the Silmarils, Doriath, Lúthien—but he always found his way back. Sometimes it took weeks, and he returned with skin kissed by Arien and freckles as big as fingertips. Sometimes it took minutes, and when he stumbled through the door snow peppered his hair and chill ached in his bones, the wraith from the blizzard. 

This time, it had been four hours, and he dripped water from the storm all over their floorboards, cloak soaked all the way through,  _ clothes  _ soaked all the way through, water dripping from his hair; it traced lines down over the contours of his face. He leant heavy against the door frame.

“Maglor, what—”

“No time—” he wavered, his grip on the wood faulty. “I—” His fingers slipped, and he fell. 

* * *

Hypothermia. Or Pneumonia. Maybe both. Probably both. 

No one ever got sick like this in Doriath, he knew that much. His mother kept the place warm for them—and it was really him and Lúthien alone, since she had very little understanding of the needs of regular elves—and their kind didn't  _ get  _ sick. They could be tired and sad, they could be lonely and lamenting, but they couldn’t be sick.

The point was that despite all of that, he had not lived in Doriath all of his life and while yes, the east was hot for the most part, if you travelled North, you’d find deserts of ice and chills that froze your eyelashes white with their crystals. Then, of course, was the Gap with its snowed-in summers and wasteland winters, where ‘snow-sickness’ was the largest reason people were sent away from the front lines. For an elf to surrender to the cold it had to be bad, or they had to be weak. 

The process remained the same either way. Fill a tub with water, heat it over the fire, slip the patient into the water and wait for them to wake up again. 

Maglor slept, wrapped in the warm embrace of the bath and Daeron fought every impulse to touch him, to reach out and brush the hair away from his face, stroke his cheek, press a kiss to his forehead. Every intention of tenderness stung like a whip against his back. It had been so long since they were soft with each other; that was the love language of another lifetime and of two different people. 

The last thing Daeron said to him was that unless he swore off his bastard younger brothers he would never be welcome in their home again. 

They had been like that since they were reunited. At first, they were taken with the idea of seeing each other again and so reminded themselves of all of the different pleasures of partnership, but then Maglor asked him why he never returned:  _ “why the vanishing act?”  _

Daeron shot back:  _ “why did you kill my cousins? My uncles?”  _

_ “Why did you drive my great-niece to jump?” _

_ “Why did you kidnap her sons?” _

They still took the time to indulge themselves in each other, but hands wrapped around necks just as much as they caressed cheeks, and mouths bit as much as they kissed. It was not how a marriage was meant to function, but it was how it did, and nothing changed. There was that paradox again. This was not what marriage was, and yet it was, because they were married, and this was how they were. 

He had hours to think about what he would say before Maglor finally opened his eyes again.

“What I said still stands.”

“I know. Things have changed between us.”

“Why can’t you just admit that you fucked everything up? That you’re the reason everything has changed—or, no, let’s be honest: that everything is  _ broken  _ now. That the only reason you and your family aren’t known as the biggest monsters of the first age is that you were up against a literal  _ god. _ ” He paused to breathe, but that impulse remained; the desire to say something that would cut. “Sometimes I really hate you.”

“Sometimes I hate me, too.”

“Not as much as I can, so don’t pull that. I  _ married  _ you. I sat and I listened to my father tell me every reason why you and your kin were a blight upon the earth, I listened to Finrod, all perfect and pure, describe the carnage at Alqualondë, and I decided that I didn’t mind; I was okay with that. I forgave what I never had the right to, and I gave you the benefit of the doubt, for which you murdered my kin and all but wiped out my sister’s line which, might I remind you, is all—” he swallowed the sob— “Is all that’s left of her in this world. And you want my pity?”

“What do you want me to say to you?”

“Nothing. I want you to say nothing, for once in your life, and  _ listen.”  _

Maglor nodded. Yet, when he reached into himself for some semblance of a good rant—one that would be equal parts painful and cathartic—all he found where the same three things he always found: Lúthien, the Kinslayings, the twins. 

“Your brothers would’ve killed my sister—or, no, not killed her; she wasn’t something that could be killed easily, but they would’ve hurt her. Did you hear about them? Did you know? Actually, no; don’t answer that. I just want you to tell me that you’d have slit their throats for it, that they were wrong and that they deserved every cruelty that came their way. That it was Dior’s right to kill them. But whenever we come to this, you change the subject, or you ask me what I could’ve forgiven for my sister and—fuck you for this, genuinely—what she forgave of me. You won’t condemn them, and I won’t forget, so we’re at an impasse.” 

“Your sister—”

“Did nothing wrong. I have nothing to forgive. Why can’t you see that it doesn’t  _ matter  _ what I would do hypothetically if she had been a terrible person? There’s no point to us speaking in hypotheticals when reality looms heavy above.”

“May I speak?” 

Daeron nodded. 

“We—at the time—only heard what they told us. We only learnt anything close to the truth in Doriath, and they were dead before we could ask. Every time I think about them, I see the people that they were when they were little and sweet. I was an adult when Curufin was born; it’s hard to see only the bad in someone you held as a baby and swore to look after.”

“Then you wouldn’t hurt them.”

“I—” he made a move to stand but stumbled where he stood. Daeron rushed forward and caught him. “I’m not making excuses,” he murmured, then passed out. 

* * *

How long had he waited for Maglor to wake up? How long would he continue to wait? Would he lose him mid-conversation again? He slept as peacefully as normal which, of course, meant that he didn’t sleep peacefully at all, and in all likelihood wouldn’t be in the best mood when he woke, either. It wasn’t an exciting thought.

Elves didn’t die easily, and he seemed stable, so he could walk out and leave him to his self-imposed exile for the rest of the days of Arda. 

What would he do if he left?

He could try and find out which part of the ocean housed the ruins of Doriath, he could try and find the others—Nimrodel and Mithrellas—or he could look for Elwing’s brothers in some hope that they might still be found alive. Or he could sail west and look for his mother among the halls of the gods. All would probably be wiser choices than to wait and listen to the rise and fall of the breath of the kinslayer that, for some reason, he’d chosen to attach himself to. 

Unfortunately, there was something else.

Maglor could’ve died, if he hadn’t come home. He could’ve laid down on the earth and waited for Mandos to take him. He could’ve left him forever, and they never would’ve had the chance to make things right again. Maybe they couldn’t, but would there be a way to move forward knowing he’d never tried?

He twisted the wedding ring he still wore—simple gold, nothing special, easy to hide and wouldn’t raise questions.  _ Fortunately,  _ there was something else. 

* * *

He handed Maglor a bowl of stew when he woke up. “I got bored and decided to do something useful,” he said by means of an answer to the question in his expression. 

“Thank you.” Maglor began to eat. He winced as he swallowed, but Daeron felt some fierce determination to his well being that meant that he didn’t care as long as he kept it down. As long as Maglor lived, there was still something that they could salvage. If feeling only. 

“You said you weren’t making excuses.”

He paused, then nodded. “I wasn’t. I just—Daeron, I don’t  _ know  _ what I would’ve said or done. Then I tried not to think about it.” He shuddered. “I was grateful that they were dead,” he breathed. Then, “I know that I don’t want to see them again. I—I’m a coward. I don’t think I could face them.”

“Okay.”

“Okay?” 

“I can accept that.”

“Okay.” Maglor took another mouthful. “Thank you for saving my life. You didn’t have to.”

“I did. Maybe not physically, but there’s more than that.”

“What else did you want to tell me off for?” He didn’t smile, but Daeron recognised that shift in the expression of his eyes, the first sign of an easy lightness coming back to him. He always recovered fast. 

“The kinslayings mostly. So many people dead; families torn apart, children orphaned, homes burning and records lost forever. I know—I understand that there was nothing else that you could do, but I want to know how you live with that mark on your soul. How can you keep going? How many innocents did you kill?”

Maglor shut his eyes. “Ten at Alqualondë, twenty-four at Doriath, thirty-one at Sirion. I keep going by not thinking about it, mostly. My brother thought about it every day and every time he’d end those discussions by reciting off the list of reasons why it wasn’t our fault. He wanted so badly for there to have been justice.”

“You kept count?” He was surprised by that more than anything else. He had heard enough about Maedhros that he figured out for himself why he’d been driven to the end that he had. Maedhros, who Maglor always said didn’t believe in justice, yet wanted it nonetheless. It made sense. 

Maglor nodded. “I don’t want to know what happens if I lose count. It wasn’t something we did lightly. Did you think that?”

“I don’t know what I thought.” He was silent for a moment. “Who was the youngest?”

“Some kid in Alqualondë who didn’t know what he was doing. He tried to take me one-on-one. I was just...faster; he couldn’t parry every strike.” Maglor stared at his hands. 

“Did you know his name?”

He shook his head. Then, as if he was speaking to himself: “Maedhros and I, as a rule, wouldn’t hurt anyone unarmed or anyone who looked younger than fifty.”

“Elwing—”

“We wouldn’t have hurt her, I swear; my oath means something. Or, it used to.” He smiled a bitter smile. “I don’t think she trusted us not to, which I can’t really blame her for. She wasn’t in a good state of mind at all. We were all broken, by then.”

“Why did you take the twins?”

“Because they were Elwing’s, and it was my fault that they were alone. It would be dishonourable to let them die and they would’ve, so don’t look at me like that. Ruins attract scavengers a thousand times worse than me.”

“You have a strange sense of honour.”

“I have a different sense of honour to you.”

“Okay.” Daeron took a breath. Despite the fact that they were trapped inside with all of the damp and the stray woodsmoke from the hearth, the air had a new freshness to it. He slipped the ring off his finger, and set it down on the bedside table. Maglor tipped his head to the ceiling and shut his eyes. He took in his own, sharp breath. “I think that this—” He stopped to search for the right word and found that he was crying. He had known that this would be hard; he wasn’t naive, he just hadn’t expected—he hadn’t expected the lump in his throat. “I think we’re broken,” he continued, at last, “and I think our marriage is broken, too. Maybe at some point in time there was something left to revive, but—”

“Not anymore,” Maglor finished for him. 

“Not anymore. I don’t think we can fix this, but—and maybe it’s because against my better judgement I still love you—maybe we can make something new. Maybe—” he paused again to steady his breath— “maybe we can start over.”

Maglor opened his eyes. “I’d like that.”

**Author's Note:**

> I was aiming for bittersweet, let me know if it achieved it!! I like to think that after this they really do give their relationship a sincere second go and that they manage to actually rebuild something healthy because I'm an optimist at heart.


End file.
